


Denver, December

by Sylvestris



Category: Better Call Saul (TV), Breaking Bad
Genre: F/F, First Time, Sharing a Bed, welcome to trope city
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-03 16:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13345131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvestris/pseuds/Sylvestris
Summary: When a snowstorm grounds the last flight back to Albuquerque, Kim makes an unexpected connection with another passenger.





	Denver, December

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gemini_melia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gemini_melia/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "After their flight back to ABQ gets cancelled (creator's choice where they're coming from), Kim and Lydia get to know each other. Preferred trope to include: bedsharing.”
> 
> This fic takes place at some point after season 3 where Kim and Jimmy have broken up for unspecified reasons (unspecified because nothing I could come up with could be anywhere near as devastating as whatever the BCS writers have up their sleeves).

The snow is coming down in sheets now, and Kim has been glancing at the departures board every few minutes for the last couple of hours, watching as flight after flight is cancelled in bright red. The row that reads UNITED 308 5.31P ALBUQUERQUE BOARDING has remained unchanged for almost as long, even though it’s now half past six, the door to the jetway is still closed, and not a single one of the hundred-odd passengers at the gate has been called to board. A sleeping man sprawls across three seats; a dark-haired, elegantly dressed woman is arguing with a gate agent; a group of teenage girls huddle around the last remaining charging point.

At another time, it’s something she would have called Jimmy about. _Hey, guess who’s stranded at the airport in Denver?_ He would have figured out she was in a public place and said something lewd to make her laugh; they would have commiserated about how late she was going to be home; he would have promised to have some of Albuquerque’s finest takeout waiting for her whenever she got back, and she would have specified Frontier, and he would have ribbed her about her “weird stew cravings” and got it anyway even though he doesn’t like chile as hot as she does. But Kim knows, has known for some time now, that that kind of conversation isn’t going to happen ever again. She dials a different number instead.

“Paige? Yeah, hi, it’s me.”

“Kim! How are you? How was the symposium?”

“Great,” Kim says. “Seriously, thank you so much for that recommendation. It was very informative. Uh…”

She stalls. She’d have liked to keep talking to Paige about the banking law symposium, but her attention is too scattered.

“I just wanted to give you a heads-up that I’m still at the airport right now and they’re cancelling flights left, right and center,” Kim says. “Mine’s supposedly still good to go, but, uh, if not, I’m gonna be spending an extra night here.”

“Oh,” Paige says, with something tender in her voice that makes Kim stiffen. “Do you want to reschedule tomorrow morning?”

“Not yet,” Kim says. “It’s just I might have to. I’ll let you know.”

She should have cancelled already. It’s just that she and Kevin and Paige planned this ten a.m. brunch meeting weeks ago, and it’s the thing Kim reminds herself of whenever the silence in her office gets too loud and thick.

“Okay,” Paige says. “Have you got somewhere to stay tonight? Just in case?”

“I’ll find something,” Kim says, even though she guesses about seventy-five per cent of the people at the symposium will be stranded too, and that everyone whose flights were already cancelled will have had a head start at finding hotel rooms; she kicks herself for not making arrangements sooner. Her mistake was stepping outside the convention center to a still grey sky and wisps of snow and thinking it didn’t look as bad as the forecasts sounded.

The dark-haired woman returns from the podium, scans the lounge for empty seats, and sits down next to Kim, scoffing and shaking her head.

“Excuse me,” Kim asks, “did they tell you if it’s cancelled yet?”

“Nope,” the woman says. “I asked them if they’d secured a new landing slot in Albuquerque, and they couldn’t tell me that either. Of course, if they sit there any longer, they’re going to have to de-ice the plane again, which is probably going to push the crew into overtime, so…” She sighs. “On the off-chance that they don’t cancel, we’ll be sitting here until midnight.”

“Huh,” Kim says, digesting all that. “Good to know.”

“I don’t suppose you have the number for the Hyatt? I would have booked a room when I got here, but it took me two hours to clear customs and they don’t let you use your phone…”

“The downtown Hyatt?” Kim asks, delving into her briefcase. “Yeah, actually, I was just at the ABA symposium there.” The woman gives her a quizzical look.

“Sorry, the American Bar Association? I’m an attorney. Kim Wexler,” Kim adds, half out of reflex, and offers her hand.

“Lydia Rodarte-Quayle,” the woman says, giving it a firm shake. “Logistics. Madrigal Electromotive.”

“Nice to meet you, Lydia,” Kim says. “Madrigal, that’s— I didn’t know they had an office in Albuquerque.”

“We don’t,” Lydia says, watching Kim transcribe the Hyatt’s phone number on a scrap of legal pad. “We have a couple of subsidiaries there. I’m just passing through. Thank you,” she adds, taking the paper and folding it in quarters with the number uppermost.

“No problem,” Kim says. “Would you— if you’re calling, would you mind asking them how many rooms they have left? I still haven’t made arrangements for myself, so…”

But Lydia’s phone has started buzzing; she looks at the screen and quickly gets up. “Sure. Excuse me,” she says, and makes a beeline for the quieter far corner of the lounge, tugging her rolling suitcase behind her.

Kim calls the airport Westin— she’s in no mood for a cab ride downtown, and the Denver Grand Hyatt is at the uncomfortable end of her price range anyway— but the woman at the other end apologises and tells her that they’re booked solid. Could she put Kim on hold while she calls around to see if any of the other airport hotels has a room?

“Yes, thank you,” Kim says, just as UNITED 308 5.31P ALBUQUERQUE CANCELLED flashes up on the departures board and a tired-sounding woman begins a PA announcement:

“Would all passengers please be advised that due to extreme weather conditions, all outbound flights are grounded until further notice. For those passengers needing overnight accommodation, we will be providing cots on the lower level of Terminal One…”

She goes on about where to claim food vouchers, how to retrieve checked baggage, and which airline desks are open for rebooking, while everywhere people are rising, milling around with their bags and coats and newspapers, pressing phones to their ears, grumbling to each other.

The hotel’s hold music stops with an abrupt click. “I’m sorry, ma’am, the ones I could get through to don’t have anything tonight. I think you might have to try downtown.”

“I will,” says Kim. “Thank you.” The Grand Hyatt it is, then. It is a small bright spot in her day that they have a room available, just one. She is getting to her feet, hoping to beat the rush to the cab stands outside, when the power abruptly goes out.

The next few moments are confusing. She is caught up in a mass of people moving in darkness in conflicting directions. Groans, shouts; a few people laugh. Kim sucks in a breath and tolerates being touched on all sides; she makes it through the maze of the seating area and out into the central hallway and nearly walks straight into Lydia, who is standing there frozen, looking profoundly distracted, in a manner that touches off something deep and uncomfortable inside her. Kim itches to leave, but the woman is clearly having some sort of anxiety attack.

“Come with me,” Kim says, making a split-second decision, and takes Lydia by the arm, leading her into the nearest restroom. It is almost totally dark, but deserted. Lydia leans on the counter, taking ragged breaths.

“Is this better?” Kim asks, suddenly wondering if an enclosed space might make things worse, but Lydia nods. In time, her breathing slows down.

“Oh, Christ,” she mutters, her head bowing toward the sink. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Kim says. She can hear what must be generators powering up through the walls, and light is flickering under the door. “Um, do you have— somewhere to go?”

“I got a call from work,” Lydia says. “I never got a chance to… I got off the phone and everyone was already leaving…”

Kim thinks of the departures hall full of cots, the lights left on all night, the noise.

“I’ve got a room at the Hyatt,” she says. “A double. It was the last one left. If you’re— comfortable with it, we could share.”

She’s almost glad she can’t see Lydia’s expression very well, but there’s no affront in her voice when she speaks, just surprise. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Kim says. “I mean, I tried the airport hotels and it seems like they’re booked solid… you could try somewhere else downtown, but there’s some sort of convention going on, so…”

Also, she feels vaguely guilty about poaching the last room after giving Lydia the number.

“Thank you,” Lydia says. Recovered, she has regained some of the coolness in her voice. “That’s very generous.”

 

 

They don’t talk much during the cab ride. All Kim learns about Lydia is that she just flew in from Germany via London and that the international arrivals hall was in such chaos that she had to sprint to the gate after clearing security. Her hair is swept up into a pristine French twist and her dark grey suit fits her in the kind of way you have to pay an actual tailor for, but she looks about as tired as Kim feels. The quiet is welcome after hours of airport noise, but Kim wishes she had talked a little more to this stranger when they arrive at the hotel, where her keycard opens the door to a very nice, very spacious corner room with one king bed. Just one.

“Okay,” she says, awkwardly holding the door open with her shoulder, starting to blush at the horrifying thought that Lydia might think she _engineered_ this. “Uh…”

“I’ll take the couch,” Lydia announces, walking past her before she can suggest calling down to the front desk to ask if they’re absolutely sure they didn’t make a mistake.

“I swear they told me it was a double room,” Kim says helplessly, but Lydia’s feeling for the lever under the couch cushion that makes it fold out.

“Do you want the first shower?” she asks, straightening up. “I need to, uh, go print something out. In the lobby. Excuse me.”

She takes her keycard and vanishes down the hallway, still dragging her suitcase. Kim stands in the empty room, her face burning.

 

 

They end up at a bar: the hotel’s wi-fi resisted every one of Kim’s attempts to check her email, and Lydia was getting flustered about some document she had to access for work, and although this place looks like a dive that aimed for eighties luxe and missed, it’s close enough to the convention center that they can connect to the internet via its network. Lydia orders a glass of water and sits behind her laptop, typing furiously, while Kim goes to the airline website and debates buying a ticket for tomorrow morning’s flight. Everything grounded until further notice, wasn’t that what they said? She finds herself looking at one-way car rental options, unsure whether the restless anxiety she feels is an urge to get back to Albuquerque or simply to get out of Denver. She clicks aimlessly from tab to tab, as if refreshing the information might change the situation.

“Did you see this?” she asks Lydia. “Uh— the weather? Eighteen inches of snow in Kansas City, two feet out here, and that’s just tonight…”

“New Mexico won’t get the worst of it until tomorrow,” Lydia says, staring intently at whatever’s on her screen. “If they’d just kept the airport open, we could have… FedEx flies regional jets to Grand Junction, I could have talked to them…”

She trails off, brow slightly furrowed, mouthing words to herself, then shuts her laptop.

“Never mind. It’s academic. The only way out of here now is by car.”

“I was just thinking about that,” Kim says, “but it’s— what, seven hundred miles? So if I left right now, even driving the speed limit, I’d get there around—”

Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, that’s when she needed to be in Albuquerque. Paige. She’s completely forgotten to call Paige.

“Five in the morning,” she finishes. “Would you excuse me for a minute?”

 

 

Outside the bar, shuffling her feet to keep warm, Kim turns on the phone she’d shut off to save its battery and sighs when an unread text pops up.

_I heard they’ve grounded all the planes - hope you made it out in time! Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow if you can make it._

“Paige? I’m so sorry, I…”

Got distracted when my flight was cancelled and a stranger needed a place to stay? Wasted time checking emails and feeling sorry for myself?

“I completely forgot to call you back,” Kim confesses. “They did cancel my flight. Whenever you and Kevin want to reschedule, I’m— I’m all yours.”

“Kim, don’t worry about it,” Paige says. There is that tenderness in her voice again, a quality Kim has been aware of since the first time Paige saw her in her cast and sling after the Gatwood Oil fiasco and Chuck’s funeral, something soft and forgiving that Kim is not entirely sure she deserves. “Actually, Kevin’s kind of in the same boat right now? He had a big meeting in Salt Lake City the day after tomorrow and he’s having to rearrange that too. I mean, what can you do, right?”

“Right,” Kim agrees.

Upon ending the call, she sees that she’s missed five voicemails in the past hour. All are from an unfamiliar number with the Albuquerque area code, and she allows herself to light a cigarette, smoke it to completion, and light another before opening them. It’s Jimmy. He’s raspy and drunk and behind him she can hear distant traffic, a siren, open space.

“Hey, Kim, it’s… it’s me. Call me, all right?” A pause. “Not on this number. Call me on my cell, I know you still have it. Just… call me, that’s all.”

 _Beep_. “Hey, Kim, it’s me again. I remembered what you said about, y’know, not calling any more, but I think if we just _talked_ about—”

 _Beep_. “Look, I know I screwed up. Big time. I know… I know it’s bad and I know that you’re still mad at me and that’s okay. But I can’t take this—”

 _Beep_. “—one more chance—”

 _Beep_. “—miss you.”

Kim grinds her cigarette out into the snow and watches her breath form frozen clouds.

 

 

She has a rule: if she drinks, she’s not allowed to touch the bottle of Ambien she keeps for those times when sleep has to be taken by force, and if she’s going to take an Ambien, she’s not allowed to drink. Tonight was starting to look like the latter kind of night, but she’s changed her mind.

“Can I get two Old-Fashioneds?” Kim asks the bartender, and realises, far too late, that offering Lydia a drink means they are now _socialising_ , not simply sharing each other’s company out of necessity, and that she should have asked Lydia if she wanted something in the first place, and then considers that asking her could have implied something _more_ than socialising, which— even if she were interested in Lydia, now is neither the time nor the place. She doesn’t want to turn whatever this is into an impromptu date. All she wants is to have a drink with someone who is guaranteed not to ask her a single question about Jimmy McGill.

“Ma’am?” the bartender says, and Kim sees two finished cocktails on the counter.

“I’m sorry, it was rude of me not to ask what you wanted,” Kim says, setting down their glasses and sliding back into the booth. Lydia eyes the cocktail over her laptop as if she’s never seen one before. “I— anyway. That’s an Old-Fashioned. It’s mostly bourbon.”

“Okay,” Lydia says. “Thank you.”

Kim takes a drink, letting it burn the back of her throat. Now that the words _impromptu date_ have floated into her head, they’re stuck there. It’s not as if Kim has never felt attracted to a woman before; it’s just that those feelings are so infrequent and so fraught that she’s never known what to do with them except shove them into a corner in her mind with other uncomfortable things.

“Is it still snowing?” Lydia asks, sipping her drink.

“Yeah. Pretty hard.”

Kim casts about for a conversational topic. Anything to get her mind off Jimmy and his plaintive voicemails and how hearing his voice again has thrown her completely off balance for the _n_ th time. Anything to get her to stop noticing things like the particular curve of Lydia’s mouth and the short, blunt tips of her nails.

“Did you say you worked with FedEx?” she tries.

 

 

Two drinks in, Lydia has visibly relaxed, and Kim has learned more than she ever knew she didn’t know about the drawbacks of hub and spoke transit models, how the standard shipping container revolutionised multi-modal freight, and what a “marvel of abstraction” subway maps are. “When you start to really think about these things,” she says, gazing raptly at Kim, her drink forgotten, “I mean, _really_ think about them, the beauty of them is… and it’s not just about getting goods from point A to point B, because in order to do that, you have to consider _everything_ in relation to _everything else_.”

Her eyes are sparkling with this cosmic truth of hers, and Kim can’t help but smile. But Lydia holds her gaze, and Kim suddenly feels the need to become preoccupied with the dregs of her drink. No, no, no, she tells herself. Do _not_ flirt with the brittle stranger you’ve agreed to share the last hotel room in Denver with. That kind of thing never ends well in real life. It ends, she imagines, in awkward silences and clothing hastily stuffed into carry-ons and a lingering anxiety about boundaries to dwell on at three o’clock in the morning (this is all conjecture, but Kim thinks she has a pretty good basis for it). And Lydia isn’t flirting with her. The eye contact is pretty intense, yes, but no one, not even the most socially impaired among all the men who have ever tried to put the moves on her, talks at length about the logistics of commercial aviation as an expression of sexual interest. But when she looks up again, Lydia is resting her head in her hand, listing slightly, her eyes half-closed.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Yeah,” Lydia says, straightening up and blinking hard. “It’s just I haven’t slept in, uh, thirty-six hours, and I just realised the last time I ate was in Frankfurt, so. This is going straight to my head.”

“Wow,” Kim says. “I’m sorry, we should’ve— I had dinner at the airport, so I wasn’t thinking…”

“It’s fine,” Lydia says, waving dismissively. “I brought granola bars.”

“Still, that’s… shall we get out of here? I’m ready to settle up if you are.”

“I think that’d be wise,” Lydia says, and allows Kim to touch her elbow to steady her as she stands. She’s feeling more than a little buzzed herself, and her back is starting to ache with fatigue, but as soon as she thinks of the hotel room bed her thoughts loop back around to how Lydia claimed the couch and darted out of the room and her skin prickles with tension.

Outside, the snow falls in a blinding whirl, settling several inches deep since the sidewalks were shovelled. Kim had enough foresight to pack a relatively sturdy pair of ankle boots, but Lydia’s wearing fragile-looking stilettos and she winces as her heels sink in. “Jesus,” she mutters, holding out a hand for balance.

“Okay?”

Lydia only pulls her jacket tighter around herself and tucks her head down against the cold, taking stiff, small steps. They’re only three blocks from the hotel, but by the second crosswalk Kim is miserably cold: she can barely feel her toes, her fingertips are smarting, and her face feels stung all over by wind-whipped snow. She doesn’t untense until they’re in the warmth of the elevator, rubbing their hands together, catching their breath. Yet that prickling tension comes back as soon as she steps inside their room. The bed, the couch. Lydia. She thinks again, insanely, of getting into a car and driving south. Where is it, exactly, that she wants to be?

“You must be exhausted,” Kim begins, “so…”

Lydia lets the door close with a soft click and takes one step forward, looking at Kim with vivid intensity. Don’t, Kim tells herself, involuntarily curling her fingers into her palms. Don’t kiss her. She will pull back with _that look_ , that awful mixture of disbelief and disgust, and it will be mortifying, and Kim will have to apologise as best she can and order a cab to take her back to the airport—

Lydia kisses her.

 _Oh_ , Kim thinks, and drops her purse.

“Wait,” she says, when she can breathe again. “You’re— we’re— freezing…”

“I don’t care,” Lydia breathes, kicking off her shoes and kissing Kim again. She feels like ice, like porcelain, and when Kim slides the coat off her shoulders she’s shivering violently. Kim draws her closer and kisses her back while sinking one hand into the dark soft hair at the nape of her neck, and hears and feels her gasp. Lydia’s eyes snap open with a gratifying flutter.

“Hang on,” Kim says, and clumsily bends down to unzip her boots, kicking dregs of snow onto the carpet. She rises and finds herself almost level with Lydia again and notes that it feels different, kissing someone who’s practically her own height, before Lydia pins her against the wall, her skirt riding up against Kim’s thighs, her weight tilting forward in a way that makes Kim’s nerves thrill.

“Are you okay with this?” Lydia asks, looking intently at her, hands unbuttoning her coat— something about it makes Kim go still, sure that something’s about to happen but uncertain what it could be. _Am I okay with_ what _, exactly?_ Kim echoes, but she’s starting to figure it out; she mouths “yes” and Lydia places both hands very carefully on her head and, grasping the ponytail elastic in one hand, unspools Kim’s hair from it with the other. She has never liked men playing with her hair— they never seemed to understand how easily it pulled and snagged— but Lydia does it with a delicacy that transfixes her.

“Okay, then,” Lydia says, and Kim closes her eyes and lets it happen, and like a match being struck, it does. She feels Lydia’s hands on her shoulders, her back, her bare waist; she’s cold, she’s cold, she’s cold, and then she’s warm.

Steered through the room, she’s falling backwards onto the bed and Lydia’s above her, bright-eyed and brilliant, shifting her hands from Kim’s hips to— “ _Oh_ ,” Kim gasps, and it’s the kind of sound she hardly ever makes, but she’s entirely unable to stop herself. She bites her lip, clutches a fistful of the bedcover, and feels all the tension between her and Lydia uncurl into something shimmering gold.

The minutes blur. Kim’s muscles twitch every time Lydia shifts her weight; Lydia is touching her with a specificity that makes her feel electric all over, and her thoughts are scattering like paper birds. Something discussed at the symposium drifts into her head. Res judicata, she thinks, staring at the popcorn ceiling; a matter prejudged— oh _God_ — Lydia kneels astride her and bends down to kiss her and she thinks of that cigarette she stubbed out in the snow, and then, for one exquisite moment, of nothing at all.

 

 

When she opens her eyes and rolls over, feeling almost forcibly relaxed, Lydia has fallen asleep as fast as only someone who badly needs it can. She lies flat on her back, still in her skirt and blouse, her hair coming unpinned and falling to her shoulders, and her expression is so open and vulnerable that Kim’s breath catches. Her unconsciousness relieves Kim from having to say something. Kim pulls the covers over them both and switches off the lamp.

Somewhere during the early hours she wakes, as she often does, and finds that she and Lydia have become entwined. It’s difficult to tell who reached for whom. She’s never been a clingy sleeper, but here she is, clutching the arm that Lydia has draped around her waist, feeling Lydia’s breath against her back. She starts to move away, then doesn’t.

They forgot to set the thermostat, and the room has gone cool. Kim pulls the covers up to her chin and clasps Lydia’s hand, feeling Lydia’s fingers curl around hers, sinking further into their cocoon of shared warmth. Snow falls in shadows in a rectangle of light on the wall.


End file.
